Economic and strategic considerations surrounding Chinese FDI in the United States

The growth of outward investment from China has generated expressions of concern from policymakers in the United States regarding the economic and national security impacts of such investments. While inward foreign direct investment (FDI) has come to be viewed by most observers as generally imparting net economic benefits to the host economy, acquisitions of US companies by Chinese multinational companies (MNCs) have been criticized on several grounds. One is based on the mode of entry itself: some critics believe that entry by acquisition brings lower benefits than greenfield entry. A second and more prominent concern is that acquisitions of US companies by Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) may be motivated by non-commercial objectives which, in turn, make those acquisitions of questionable value to the host economy. In this paper, we argue that Chinese FDI in the United States is more likely to take the form of acquisitions than greenfield investments for the foreseeable future. However, there is no strong case to be made that the host country economic benefits from Chinese FDI would be larger if entry took place primarily through greenfield investments. Furthermore, most of the alleged costs to the US economy from inward FDI from China are either unlikely to occur or are already anticipated by existing US laws and regulations, thus necessitating no additional, specific legislation.

The state of East Asian banking structure and activities in the United States

This paper examines the structure and activities of East Asian banks in the USA in terms of their institutional components, legal environment, asset size and market structure, loan activities, geographical distribution and area of specialization. The discussion includes 10 Asia Pacific countries. The final section presents prognoses on the domination of Japanese banks as well as those of the two Chinas.Faramarz Damanpour is a Professor of Finance and International Business at James Madison University, U.S.A.     

Assessing the Time-Squeeze Hypothesis: Hours Worked in the United States, 1969–89

This study assesses the hypothesis that hours of work have risen in the United States in recent decades. Using the Current Population Surveys and the University of Michigan Time-Use Studies, we estimate changes in market and nonmarket hours worked between 1969 and 1989, finding evidence of a "time-squeeze." This trend is particularly pronounced among labor force participants who are neither under- nor unemployed. For this group, total annual hours of work have risen by 149.     

The Union Avoidance Industry in the United States

This paper analyses the development of the union avoidance industry in the United States during the past half‐century. Focusing on one leading example from each group, it examines the activities of the four main actors that constitute that industry: consultants, law firms, industry psychologists and strike management firms. Although these firms have experienced a fall in business as unions have declined in strength and numbers — a development that the union avoidance industry has contributed to — they continue to play an important role in the US system of industrial relations. Over three‐quarters of employers hire consultants when confronted by organizing campaigns, and large union avoidance firms are increasingly seeking export markets for their expertise.     

Total and per capita value of food loss in the United States

There are few peer-reviewed or major published studies that estimate the total amount of food loss in developed countries and even fewer attempt to estimate the monetary value. We compiled estimates of the amount and value of food loss for more than 200 individual foods in the United States using the US Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service’s Loss-Adjusted Food Availability data and then aggregated these values to estimate the total value of food loss and the value by food group. The results indicate that in 2008, the estimated total value of food loss at the retail and consumer levels in the United States as purchased at retail prices was $165.6 billion. The top three food groups in terms of the value of food loss at these levels are: meat, poultry, and fish (41%); vegetables (17%); and dairy products (14%). Looking more closely at the estimates for the consumer level, this level of loss translates into almost 124 kg (273 lb) of food lost from human consumption, per capita, in 2008 at an estimated retail price of $390/capita/year. Food loss represents a significant share of household food expenditures: our estimates suggest that the annual value of food loss is almost 10% of the average amount spent on food per consumer in 2008 and over 1% of the average disposable income. This consumer level loss translates into over .3 kg (0.7 lb) of food per capita per day valued at $1.07/day. Our estimates of the total value of food loss in the United States and loss estimates by food group are useful in that they can generate awareness of the issue among the food industry members, governments, and consumers. Potential large-scale approaches and economic incentives to mitigate food loss in developed countries are also discussed.     

Industrial Relations and Relative Income Shares in the United States

This paper examines the effects of unemployment on the relative incomeshares of labor and capital in the post-World War II U.S. economy. In our econometric model, the "reserve army" effect of unemployment is mediated by the "inertia" effect of prevailing bargaining norms. Estimates of this model indicate: (1) the presence of a significant reserve army effect through the mid-1960s, a diminished effect in the late 1960s and 1970s, and a restored effect in the 1980s; and (2) a significant decline in the inertia effect of bargaining norms in the 1980s.     

Comment on “Merger Policy in the United States”

This paper comments briefly on a merger policy article by Dennis Mueller. It concurs with Mueller's judgment that X-efficiency consequences are of crucial relevance in developing a sound antitrust policy toward mergers. It agrees also that firms proposing mergers overstepping structural guidelines should be permitted an efficiencies defense, but it stresses the difficulties of making ex ante efficiency predictions.     

Edgeworth Price Cycles in Gasoline: Evidence from the United States

Studies of gasoline prices in multiple countries have found sequences of a sharp price increase followed by gradual decreases. This pattern is linked to Maskin and Tirole (Econometrica 56:571–599, 1988) duopoly pricing game and labeled Edgeworth price cycles. We examine data on average daily MSA-level retail gasoline prices for 350 MSAs in the US from 1996–2010. We confirm the finding of others and show that a relatively small number of US MSAs in contiguous upper Midwestern states evidence price cycling. However, our lengthy data set allows us to see that these MSAs began cycling in 2000. Thus, we can examine prices in cycling and non-cycling MSAs before and after cycling and find that prices are lower in MSAs that began cycling.     

Oscillating between a relationship-based and a market-based model: The Salim Group

As institutional transitions in emerging economies intensify, the basis for competition is theorised to move from relationship-based to market-based. An in-depth analysis of the strategy of the Salim Group, one of the largest ethnic Chinese conglomerates in the Asia-Pacific region, supports the view that the strategy of this conglomerate can be understood as moving between the extremes of crony capitalism (the relationship-based model) and the existing Western norms for multinational business (the market-based model). Both models are essential for its success, but the former, relationship-based model seems more important in early times and the latter, market-based model becomes more significant during recent institutional changes. We also find evidence that the strategic movement between those extremes takes the form of irregular oscillatory dynamics.

BOOK REVIEWS

Books reviewed: Employment with Human Face: Balancing Efficiency, Equity, and Voice by John W. Budd. ILR Press, an imprint of Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 2004, xiv + 263 pp., ISBN 0 8014 42087, US$39.95/£22.95.
Reviewed by Laurie Hunter
School of Business and Management, University of Glasgow Workplace Justice Without Unions by Hoyt B. Wheeler, Brian S. Klaas and Douglas M. Mahony. W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, Kalamazoo, Michigan, 2004, xii + 229 pp., ISBN 0 88099 313 8, $40.00.
Reviewed by Alexander J. S. Colvin
The Pennsylvania State University The Blue Eagle at Work: Reclaiming Democratic Rights in the American Workplace by Charles J. Morris, with a foreword by Theodore J. St. Antoine. Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 2005, 315 pp., ISBN 0 8014 4317 2, $35.00/£20.50/EUR28.95.
Reviewed by John W. Budd
University of Minnesota Reorganizing the Rust Belt — An Inside Study of the American Labour Movement by Steven Henry Lopez. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, USA, 2004, xxii + 292 pp., ISBN 0 520 23280 1, $21.95/£14.95, paper.
Reviewed by Sean Safford
London School of Economics Corporate Governance and Labour Management: An International Comparison edited by Howard Gospel and Andrew Pendleton. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005, xvi + 384 pp., ISBN 0 19 9263671, £55.00.
Reviewed by Suzanne Konzelmann
Department of Management, Birkbeck, University of London European Integration and Industrial Relations: Multi‐level Governance in the Making by Paul Marginson and Keith Sisson. Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke, UK, 2004, xxii + 360 pp., ISBN 0333968662, £60.00.
Reviewed by Bob Hancké
London School of Economics and Political Science Institutions and Wage Formation in the New Europe edited by Gabriel Fagan, Francesco Paolo Mongelli and Julian Morgan. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA, 2003, xi + 256 pp., ISBN 1 84376 432 6, £59.95.
Reviewed by Michael Neugart
Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB) Working Parents and the Welfare State: Family Change and Policy Reform in Scandinavia by Arnlaug Leira. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002, vii + 182 pp., ISBN 0 521 57129 4, $65.00/£40.00.
Reviewed by Birgit Pfau ‐Effinger
Institute for Sociology, University of Hamburg Paradise Laborers: Hotel Work in the Global Economy by Patricia Adler and Peter Adler. ILR Press, an imprint of Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 2004, xiii + 296 pp., ISBN 0 8014 41897 7, $49.95/£29.95, paper.
Reviewed by Dennis Nickson
Scottish Hotel School, University of Strathclyde How Political Parties Respond: Interest Aggregation Revisited edited by Kay Lawson and Thomas Poguntke. Routledge, London and New York, 2004, viii + 271 pp., ISBN 0 415 34797 1, £65.00.
Reviewed by Kerstin Hamann
Department of Political Science, University of Central Florida Cross‐cultural Management — Foundations and Future edited by Dean Tjosvold and Kwok Leung. Ashgate, Aldershot, UK, 2003, viii + 180 pp., ISBN 0 7546 1881 1, £45.00.
Reviewed by Mary Logan
London School of Economics New Frontiers of Democratic Participation at Work edited by Michael Gold. Ashgate, Aldershot, UK, 2003, xv + 236 pp., ISBN 0 75460924 3, £49.95.
Reviewed by Jeff Hyman
University of Aberdeen     

Privatizing Highways in the United States

We review the experience of both private toll-roads built in the United States during the 1990s, and argue that the problems they encountered could have been avoided if the length of the franchise contract would adapt to demand realizations. We also argue in favor of adjudicating private toll-roads via BOT-type contracts in competitive (Demsetz) auctions. The lessons of this paper are relevant since growing congestion and troubled government finances have made private toll-roads increasingly attractive in the United States.     

Perspective: Ranking of the World's Top Innovation Management Scholars and Universities

This paper extends Jeffrey Thieme's article “The World's Top Innovation Management Scholars and Their Social Capital,” published in 2007 in J P I M, in which he made a ranking of the world's top innovation managements scholars. This paper makes four contributions. First, this paper includes data on innovation management from articles published in two leading innovation management journals and eight top management and marketing journals during past 20 years (1991–2010). Second, this paper classifies 1229 articles into 29 categories, revealing hot topics and future research directions. Third, this paper ranks 1718 innovation management scholars over a period of 20 years from 1991 to 2010. Fourth, this is the first time that 625 universities have been ranked in terms of their current faculty research capabilities in the field of innovation management. The empirical data from the past 20 years show that the world's top 10 innovation management scholars are: Michael Song (University of Missouri‐Kansas City), Roger J. Calantone (Michigan State University), Erik Jan Hultink (Delft University of Technology), Mark E. Parry (University of Missouri‐Kansas City), Kwaku Atuahene‐Gima (China Europe International Business School), C. Anthony Di Benedetto (Temple University), Abbie Griffin (University of Utah), William E. Souder (Retired), Barry L. Bayus (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), and Christoph H. Loch (INSEAD). The world's top 10 innovation management universities are: University of Missouri‐Kansas City, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Michigan State University, INSEAD, Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, Northeastern University, Texas A&M University, Stanford University, and Delft University of Technology.     

Shareholders of the World United? Organized Labour's Preferences on Corporate Governance under Pension Fund Capitalism in the United States,United Kingdom and France

This article considers whether organized labour's engagement with shareholder activism represents a shift in unions’ traditional stakeholder preferences on corporate governance under pension fund capitalism. It does so in light of recent critiques of the class power thesis of corporate governance which suggest greater fluidity and fragmentation in labour's approach. Adopting a diverse case study strategy to compare organized labour's actions in the United States, United Kingdom and France, the article explains these activities as innovative strategies, similar to other revitalization initiatives, designed to advance traditional agendas by alternative means. The article thus concludes that, while organized labour's shareholder activism is unexpected under the class power thesis, its core preferences remain largely unchanged.     

An analysis of the intra-firm sales activities of Japanese multinational enterprises in the United States: 1977 to 1989

This paper examines the activities of the largest Japanese multinational enterprises (MNEs) operating in the United States by looking at data on exports, imports, and intra-firm trade between the Japanese subsidiaries in the United States and their parent and other foreign groups. It also examines how much of the domestic sales in the United States are accounted for by local production of the Japanese subsidiaries. Sales data provide an indication of the advantages of being multinational, which are mirrored in the growth of the post-investment sales of overseas units (both manufacturing and non-manufacturing). Data on the flows and stocks of foreign direct investment (FDI) represent the initial decisions to undertake FDI and largely ignore the learning effects of having overseas production.The authors are from the City University of Hong Kong and NORTACK Software Limited. We would like to thank the Editor, Dr Leung Hing-Man, the anonymous referees, and Don Daly, Wendy Dobson, Hiroaki Izumi, Terutomo Ozawa, Alan M Rugman and Rob Tran for their helpful comments. All errors and omissions, however, remain the responsibility of the authors.     

Emerging trends in China's financial sector

This paper reviews the trends which emerged in the financial system in China over the period 1979 to 1987. Economic and social reforms, which began in late 1978, have produced some far-reaching and significant effects on the growth of the Chinese economy. These reforms have prompted changes in the financial system, including banking reforms to handle the flow of funds to finance domestic expansion, international trade, the foreign debt and other domestic and international financial and finance-related transactions. The paper reviews the developments and focuses on some of the problems with respect to balance of payments, imbalances and inflationary pressures.Cecil R. Dipchand is a Professor of Finance in the School of Business Administration, Dalhousie University, Halifax; J. Colin Dodds is a Professor of Finance and Dean of Commerce at Saint Mary's University, Halifax; Patricia McGraw is an Administrator in the Canada-China Management Education Programme, School of Business Administration, Dalhousie University; and Keng Chen is a Lecturer in the Economics College, Xiamen University, Fujian Province, PR China. The financial assistance of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) is greatly appreciated.     

Enterprise Unions in the United States

Through a case study of a large industrial company ( TRW ) , this paper examines the history and functioning of independent local unions ( ILUs ). TRW's ILU plant wages were about the same as those at affiliated union plants and higher than those at nonunion plants. The premium explains why TRW and other companies discarded ILUs in favor of a "new" nonunion model. Yet ILUs can remedy some of the defects in that model and thus belong on the policy and research agenda     

Asian contexts and the search for general theory in management research: A rejoinder

“Asian Management Research Needs More Self-confidence” (Meyer, 2006) generated a surprisingly extended and diverse set of responses from Asia and beyond. In this rejoinder, I draw together a few lines of arguments that have emerged in that debate with the aim of moving the debate—and thus Asian management research agendas—forward. In particular, I argue that context is a crucial variable to explain management behavior, yet for practical reasons, it has been neglected in research published in top journals. Thus, I challenge management scholars in Asia and beyond to devise new research strategies to enhance our understanding of the contextual boundaries of our knowledge.

Regional multinationals and the Korean cosmetics industry

This paper analyzes the market penetration and expansion strategy of cosmetics and toiletries multinational enterprises (MNEs) in South Korea from the perspective of regional strategy as developed recently by Rugman. We find that MNEs have different market entry and expansion strategies in the home region and in the foreign region. Home region MNEs (Japanese MNEs in this case), in general, utilize their firm-specific advantages (FSAs) better than foreign region MNEs (European and MNEs from the Americas in this case). Due to differences in transaction costs, home region MNEs exploit downstream FSAs while foreign region MNEs develop upstream FSAs. Market similarity also leads to a greater incentive to operate in the home region rather than in foreign regions. The home region effect significantly increases the likelihood of entry into foreign markets as the host country's “diamond” significantly affects the market entry strategies of MNEs.

BOOK REVIEWS

Books reviewed: Laboring Below the Line: The New Ethnography of Poverty, Low‐Wage Work, and Survival in the Global Economy edited by Frank Munger. Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 2002, xi + 319 pp., ISBN 0871 546175, £42.50. Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy edited by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild. Granta Books, London, 2002, 328 pp., ISBN 1 86207 588 3, £8.99 paper. Hard Work: Life in Low‐Pay Britain by Polly Toynbee. Bloomsbury, London, 2003, 242 pp., ISBN 7475 6415 9, £6.99, paper.
Reviewed by Mary Romero
School of Justice and Social Inquiry, Arizona State University Low‐Wage America: How Employers are Reshaping Opportunity in the Workplace edited by Eileen Appelbaum, Annette Bernhardt and Richard J. Murnane. Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 2003, xii + 535 pp., ISBN 0 87154 025 8, $45.
Reviewed by David Fairris
University of California, Riverside Employment Stability in an Age of Flexibility: Evidence from Industrialized Countries edited by Peter Auer and Sandrine Cazes. International Labour Office, Geneva, 2003, xv + 272 pp., ISBN 92 2 112716 8, SFr 35, paper.
Reviewed by Gary Slater
Economics Division, Nottingham Trent University Designing Inclusion: Tools to Raise Low‐end Pay and Employment in Private Enterprise edited by Edmund S. Phelps. Cambridge University Press, 2003, ISBN 0 521 81965 5, £40.
Reviewed by David A. Spencer
Leeds University Business School, University of Leeds Can Labor Standards Improve under Globalization? by Kimberley Ann Elliot and Richard B. Freeman. Institute for International Economics, Washington, DC, 2003, xii + 179 pp., ISBN 0 88132 332 2 £19.50 paper. International Labor Standards: Globalization, Trade, and Public Policy edited by Robert J. Flanagan and William B. Gould iv . Stanford University Press, Stanford, Cal., 2004, 275 pp., ISBN 0 8047 4690 7, £36.95.
Reviewed by Rohini Hensman
Union Research Group, Bombay International Handbook of Trade Unions edited by John T. Addison and Claus Schnabel. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK/Northampton, Mass., 2003, viii + 555 pp., ISBN 1 84064 979, £140.
Reviewed by Bob Elliott
Department of Economics, University of Aberdeen Parties and Unions in the New Global Economy by Katrina Burgess. University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh Pa, 2004, xxiii + 209 pp., ISBN 0 8229 5825 2, $27.95.
Reviewed by Kerstin Hamann
Department of Political Science, University of Central Florida Industrial Relations and European Integration: Trans‐ and Supranational Developments and Prospects edited by Berndt Keller and Hans‐Wolfgang Platzer. Ashgate, Aldershot, 2003, ISBN 0 7546 33365, pp. 182, £45.
Reviewed by Richard Hyman
London School of Economics Unions in the Time of Revolution: Government Restructuring in Alberta and Ontario by Yonatan Reshef and Sandra Rastin. University of Toronto Press, Toronto/Buffalo/London, 2003, xv + 279 pp., ISBN 0 8020 8753 1, $60/£35.
Reviewed by Daphne G. Taras
University of Calgary